The Beauty of Humanity Movement (111 page)

He taps his temple with his pen, commending himself for his memorization skills. A communist education has its benefits.

T
’s mother opens the door for Maggie. Anh is slight and feminine but strong, with prominent veins in her forearms. A single streak of grey
begins at her temple and runs the length of her hair, but apart from that suggestion of maturity, she looks barely older than T
.

Maggie follows Anh across a fragrant green courtyard into a modern kitchen on the far side. The appliances gleam under the bright fluorescent light and a woven mat covers part of the linoleum floor, evidence of a game of dominoes underway upon it. The Honda Dream II rests on its kickstand in the corner of the room, a faithful member of the family.

T
is standing by the table examining his knuckles. He’d sounded very upset on the phone. “I went back to Café Võ,” he says. “Mr. Võ’s wife is dying and he has decided to sell the shop so they can go back to their village.”

“And the art? Is he taking it with him?”

“He sold it all to a dealer.”

Maggie closes her eyes for a second. Her eyelids flutter, those thin membranes struggling to conceal her disappointment. She places her palms on the table to steady herself. “Did he tell you the name of the dealer?”

“He was very vague about the whole thing,” says T
. “But, Maggie, I had an idea. I think my father might be able to draw some likeness of one of your father’s pictures if I could describe it to him.” T
places his hands on his father’s shoulders, his expression one of mild desperation.

Bình smiles weakly, with humility. “I generally stick to objects,” he says. “Things without movement or expression. But I would be very happy to try.”

Maggie swallows the lump in her throat and takes a seat on a hard wooden chair across the table from Bình. He apologizes for the fact that he has only graph paper. He holds his pencil, ready to interpret his son’s words, but T
has some difficulty getting started.

“They live in the mountains, don’t they?” his father prompts. “Not at the very top, but in the woodland areas.”

“They were in a dark cave,” says T
. “Maybe it was a cave in a mountain but you couldn’t see the mountain. It was more close up.”

“What shape was the cave?” Bình asks.

“The shape of an eye,” says T
. “The tigers are just to the left of the pupil.”

Bình makes a few bold strokes with his pencil.

“How big were they?” Bình asks.

“I don’t know,” says T
, shrugging. “Tiger size. They were strong: tearing into each other, their muscles rippling, blood gushing from the neck of the one on the right.”

The concentration on Bình’s face feels familiar to Maggie. The way his eyes dart across the page, his pencil turned horizontally as he assesses proportion. Her father used to do exactly this as he knelt on the floor of their room in Saigon and distracted her from the realities of a war, her arms draped around his neck as he brought a water buffalo to life.

“Now what do you think he wants to eat for dinner?” she remembers her father asking as he leaned back on his heels.

“Dog,” she had said over his shoulder.

“But buffalo don’t like meat, Maggie. You really are an urban girl, aren’t you.”

“What does that mean?”

“From the city. I should teach you about the country. Show you where the things we eat come from. When the war is over we’ll go into the countryside and stay at a farm for a few days. Would you like that?”

That promise alone had made Maggie pray for an end to the war.

“Huh,” Bình finally says, putting down his pencil and holding the graph paper at arms’ length.

Maggie steps round to his side of the table.

“I don’t really know how one captures the emotions of things,” Bình says.

“What do you think it means?” Maggie asks.

“If I knew, I would probably be able to do a much better job for you.”

T
examines the page and lists all the things he had neglected to communicate to his father.

Bình tears the top sheet of graph paper off his pad, ready to begin again.

This time, T
is more descriptive. He uses his hands to illustrate the degree of the tigers’ entanglement, his face to indicate the width of the one tiger’s open mouth. He describes stalagmites and shadows. Bình’s second attempt is a good deal more detailed as a result.